Empower my brand
Empower my brand

Conversations on organic food in India: What can we learn?

The consumer chatter around organic food has been building up steadily over the last few years. We used the Auris platform to churn data and understand consumer insights related to organic food consumption. About 5000 conversations were used from October 2019 through August 2020.

Data used were publically available consumer conversations from the social channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube), news, and blogs. The highlights of what we learned are below.

A significant jump in consumer conversation driven by Covid-19.

The steadily moving buzz volume saw a step change because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Consumers have started evaluating alternatives that help boost immunity and therefore have started a switch from conventional products to organic.

The conversations indicate that a higher number of consumers are considering using organic products, perhaps a good sign for the category in India.

consumer chatter organic food

Conversations are generally positive.

Consumers appreciate the health benefits from organic alternatives and engage positively with the communication put out by organic food brands.

organic food sentiment

Conversations evenly distributed by gender. Most conversations are from the Tier I cities in India.

This shows that organic food is still an urban phenomenon and the upside for consumption penetration is high. Female participation reflects that they actively drive the decision to buy or consume organic food.

 

organic food demography india

Conversation themes center around health benefits and sustainability.

trending hashtags organic food

Everyday health through organic food consumption is the dominant theme in health-related conversations.

Consumers also believe that organic food can lead to an enhanced state of wellness & happiness.

health related conversations

The high pricing of organic food is what mars the consumer experience. 

This is followed by issues related to product quality.

organic food customer experience

Inspiring consumer efforts to switch to organic emerged from our deep dive. These stories are from all corners of the country.

  • A Chennai family’s effort to transform their house into a zero-waste home relying on organic food and rainwater harvesting.

organic food news chennai

  • A call to deal with increasing cancer prevalence by moving to organic food (Orissa).

organic food orissa

  • How an apartment building in Mumbai transformed itself to grow its own food organically and reduce wastage by recycling.

organic food mumbai

  • Anganwadis in Mizoram are ploughing organic food for the nutritional needs of their children.

mizoram organic food

  • Farmer co-operatives are growing organic food and selling directly to consumers in Palakkad.

organic food kerela

  • Organic food cooked traditionally in Nagaland.

organic food nagaland

  • Consumer conversations on the ill-effects of consuming “fake food”

organic food chemical pesticide

Top 20 influencers contributed to conversations on organic food in India.

Of the influencers, most of them were Government institutions, elected officials, industrialists or nutritionists.

News from the organic food category

  • Corporate initiatives & Events

  • Pricing related concerns resonate with industry leaders

 

  • Media push to encourage consumption

  • Organic good sector growth-related

  • Government initiatives & programs

Conclusions

Over the past 12 months, consumer conversations on organic food have grown significantly in India, aided by the Covid 19 pandemic. Policymakers are industrialists who have pushed the envelope on the subject as well. Brands looking at launching new organic/sustainable/eco-friendly products should make use of such tailwinds.

Auris can be used for in-depth conversations analysis. For category insights like the one above, say ‘Hello’ to hello@genylabs.io.

How should responsible brands behave in the aftermath of Covid-19?

The impact of Covid-19 is just beginning to unravel. Nobody knows the ‘endgame’. Is it a drug, a vaccine, tests or a period of continued lockdown?

It’s a period of uncertainty. The P&L projections for 2020 that you drew up are meaningless. And it is impossible to make any projections. The virus seems to be in control. The virus will determine what the future will look like.

Since everything on the ground seems to be coming to a standstill, CMOs and senior marketing professionals are contemplating what to do. How to navigate this uncertain future.

At this time, any responsible brand should just stand by its consumers. You may wonder, how, and to what end?

The very first thing you should do is to listen. Listen to your consumers who might be asking questions, seeking information and guidance on how to safeguard themselves and their families.

Everyone, including your brand & marketing teams, should be on standby. After all, this is an apocalyptic emergency!

By actively listening and responding to consumers, in general, you’d be able to alleviate some of their concerns. Any help during such trying times would be a significant help.

Your help, advice or guidance could be directed towards:

  • Consumers who do not direct their questions to your brand, product or service but to anyone who could help – make a genuine, informed effort to help consumers.
  • For those consumers who come to your digital assets to provide feedback or ask questions – be available to respond immediately.
  • Walk the extra mile to assuage the concerns of your consumers. Be transparent and explain why you are unable to help if you aren’t able to. People will understand.
  • Show intent to help and actual delivery. Lip-service using a “canned” response is not the need of the hour.

Great brands survive upheavals with great resilience because they have the consumers’ best interest in mind. They form bonds that endure recessions. Consumers rally behind such brands after the clouds scatter.

Great brands also listen to their employees and others in the ecosystem. And in times of chaos and uncertainty, brands become even more actively available to resolve issues, as best as they can.

This is such a time. It is a ‘black swan’ moment which we’d all remember for a long time. The brands that stand by the consumer, actively listen and respond will be remembered for decades.

So, dig in your boots and be available, with your ears to the ground. When the Covid cloud disappears, you’d find that your efforts have earned your brand tremendous goodwill and invaluable equity.

Playstore & Appstore reviews: A source of consumer insights

Your app is your “storefront.” Customers come in and out and engage with your product or service in between. The rating and comments they leave are a direct reflection of their experience. An analysis of consumer-comments can be very helpful in understanding the elements of customer experience.
 
The starting point to this is, of course, to be able to track the reviews in real-time. The reviews could be on the Playstore (Android) or the App Store (iOS), which would take care of all the buzz.
 
Auris integrates with App Store and Play Store reviews and enables text analysis on these. The review tracking of Auris helps understand not only the sentiment but also, the root cause of the issue.

What consumer insights can be had from Playstore Review Tracking?

Real-Time tracking of Playstore reviews helps the marketing function understand various elements of the consumer experience. This leads to insights.
 
Consider a few recent reviews on the Uber app.
Uber customer experience
Uber App Store Review Monitoring
Uber PlayStore Review Monitoring
 
The reviews show how different facets of payment on the Uber app leads to poor customer experience. These issues range from non-acceptance of payment options or the inability to switch between payment methods.
 
Imagine insights from thousands of such unique reviews across all elements of customer experience on the app – booking, wait time, payments, refunds, customer care, and sub-issues within those!
 
The wealth of customer insights in this is significant and can lead to a multitude of actions that can steadily improve the product and service elements.
 

Automatic Insights from Review Tracking and Analysis.

Insights go beyond monitoring. Using a sizeable number of reviews, we should be able to understand patterns in consumer experience, which should help in drawing actionable insights.
 
To analyze comments automatically requires sophisticated algorithms which are usually driven by artificial intelligence.
 
The Auris platform brings it all together. It helps ingest the data in real-time and tags it for various elements of customer experience in real-time. Some examples of how this data enrichment and tagging works are shown.
Customer experience on Playstore Review Customer experience on App Store review
 
Having this data at an aggregate level can help understand patterns and understand what the experiential issues are. See an example of a pharmacy delivery platform for example. You can see how delivery issues are negatively impacting the customer experience. Further slices of which regions or cities are impacted more can help plan logistics.
Analyzing customer experience using playstore reviews
 

Setting OKRs or KPIs on performance

Goal-setting tied to consumer experience is important. The key metrics which an app-centric business should consider includes:
 
  1. The net positive experience percentage – what is the difference between % positive and % negative experiences. An equivalent of the NPS.
  2. Turn-around time (TAT) – How much time did we take to provide the first response and the final response to the customer who had a complaint.
  3. Reversing sentiment – In the ideal case scenario, a customer could be persuaded to change the public rating if her issues have been addressed satisfactorily. Such movements should be recorded and can be the basis of incentives for the customer care team.
While there are a variety of sources of customer insights, both public and proprietary, using the existing customer opinion on Playstore reviews or App Store reviews can open you to rich insights. Use these insights to continuously work on and improve customer experience.